


Egress

by gisho



Category: Neverwhere - Neil Gaiman
Genre: Gen, Harm to Children
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-20
Updated: 2015-12-20
Packaged: 2018-05-08 01:33:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 599
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5478317
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gisho/pseuds/gisho
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Door’s sister tries to find her way home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Egress

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on LiveJournal. Warning for claustrophobia, canon-typical horror.

\--

Ingress is not afraid of the dark. She's afraid of the _things_ in the dark, if she doesn't know what they are. Her sister told her once that was a good thing, as long as she was courageous as well. Ingress asked her what courageous meant, and her sister told her it meant she did things even if she was scared, because sometimes you had to do things even if you were scared of what might happen.

Ingress is determined to be courageous.

She's been in the dark for a long time now. The blood on her hands has mostly dried. She's very tired; she spent hours trying to open the wall, but walls don't open easily. Even the most complicated lock will answer her now, but she cannot find a door. The walls are stone, she thinks - something cool, anyway, and hard. No seams, no rivets. If there were rivets she could open them.

_(" Anything that was fastened together, wants to come loose. Give it permission. Doors want to open. All you have to do is let them.")_

Ingress misses her sister. She doesn't miss her mother because the blood on her hands (and clothes and face and hair) is her mother's blood, and she is afraid that her mother is dead. So she is not going to think about her mother at all because she knows if sh does it will hurt her inside and she'll start crying and she doesn’t want to start crying, not now, not when she's still in the dark. (Things might hear.) So she misses her sister because she doesn't know where her sister is but her sister is strong and brave and her sister will come find her.

_("If you're ever lost, think of me and try to open a door back to me. You're not strong enough yet to open it, but I'll feel it, and I'll open a door to you.")_

Sometime she slept. It might have been more than once; it's impossible to tell the difference between open eyes and closed. Ingress had to feel her eyelids to know they were closed, and only then did she realize her eyes had been closed all this time. She forced them open, touched them to be sure they were open, but it was still dark, completely dark.

Ingress hopes it is dark in this place, because the alternative is that she has lost her sight.

_(An angel. There was an angel, and it had looked her in the eyes with eyes made of fire that looked into every crevice of her soul and said, No, you will not do, and after that it was dark. There is a gap, but she cannot bear to examine it too closely, not now.)_

Ingress is afraid. She is also bored. It's a strange combination, but even soul-numbing terror begins to wear down into a kind of dead exhaustion, and there's nothing to do here but sit and wait and try hopelessly again and again to open a door.

She's so tired.

She had to stop trying for a while. Gather her strength. She wants to see light again. She wants her sister.

_("Don't give up. It will be easy, when you try it just the right way. Open your mind, let the door open itself.")_

One more time. She reaches her hand out and spread it against the wall. It's a very small hand, but that's alright. It means she won't need a very big opening.

 _Door,_ she tells the world, and the wall opens up and she stumbles forward into the light.

\---


End file.
